1968 Lamborghini Miura: First Drive Flashback

It was as good then as it is now.

This article originally published in the 1968 May issue of Road & Track.

The Lamborghini P400 Miura first appeared as a pro­totype in the spring of 1966, and it pretty well set the whole motoring world on its ear. It was inevitable that mid-engine racing cars would influence the layout of produc­tion sports cars, and in the Miura we had not only the first serious evidence of the trend but the best possible combina­tion of names attached to the effort: Lamborghini and Bertone. Lamborghini had set out to build the world's finest GT cars and had quickly succeeded, and Bertone is easily the leading sculptor of automotive form. The Miura was no let­ down from the reputation of either. Now, though it doesn't yet conform to the regulations for 1968 cars in the U.S., there are about a dozen production Miuras in the country and we're pleased to offer the first full road test of one of them—this one owned by our friend Bob Estes of Ingle­wood, California, Lamborghini distributor for western U.S.

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If the memory should need refreshing, the Miura is built on a sheet-steel boxed central frame that has girders extend­ ing to the front and rear for the major mechanical elements ■—which girders are extensively perforated for lightness. The power package consists of the basic Lamborghini 4-cam V-12, tuned to produce about 400 bhp @ 7000 rpm, posi­tioned transversely just behind the passenger compartment and ahead of the rear wheels; a single-plate dry Borg & Beck clutch on the left end of the engine; a gear transfer drive from the clutch down to the gearbox; a 5-speed gearbox be­hind the engine; and a ZF limited-slip differential driving through half-shafts to the rear wheels. Front and rear sus­pension are by unequal-length arms, coil springs, tube shocks and anti-roll bars and the brakes are Girling discs, mounted outboard. Bertone's elegant aluminum bodywork transforms the impressive machinery into beauty, seats two people and provides 5.1 cu ft of luggage space behind the engine com­partment— thanks to the transverse engine layout.

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The en­gine radiator is up front; a low air intake supplies it with fresh air, and two grilles in the hood exhaust the air. Body side intakes just behind the doors feed the engine compart­ment (which contains the oil cooler) cool air. and this air is exhausted through louvers which also keep the rain out and allow some rear vision (the prototype originally had glass here). Further intakes in the silver rocker panels feed the rear brakes—the front ones get air from the front intake— and the exotic magnesium alloy wheels are designed to pull warm air out of the brakes with their integral ducting. Obvi­ously this car is the ultimate (for the present day, at least) extension of the idea of a road car designed to transport two people from A to B as fast as possible, with some degree of comfort.

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After Bob Estes explained the controls, and certain pre­cautions, to us we edged our way out into Los Angeles traffic in the Miura— very nervously. One just doesn't go out into the rat race with a $20,000 jewel like this—with limited rearward vision—nonchalantly. But soon we were at ease. We can't say the car is easy to drive; it isn't. The controls, except for steering, are downright heavy. But a sensitive driv­ er can quickly learn to drive the car smoothly and thread his way through traffic. The Miura engine is more highlytuned than that of the 400 GT which we tested last year and found so flexible; through "hotter" valve timing and richer carburetion it develops about 400 bhp SAE (a 7000 rpm instead of the GT's 360 @ 6500. It still moves off smoothly from rest with no clutch juggling, and idles reasonably well at 750 rpm, but it will foul its plugs if driven much this way.

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But this is not what the Miura is for, and it's a cinch that anyone who can afford it won't have to use it for anything except what he wants to use it for. What it is for is going to 7500 rpm in each gear, which it does with a long surge of power and beautiful noise that could best be described as ecstasy . . . There's a torsional vibration at 2900 rpm on acceleration which we didn't notice in the 400 GT, but after that it's a smooth pull. Valve float finally happens at 7900. For cruising, the overdrive 5th gear gives 24 m ph/ 1000 rpm. Even though the engine is just behind you, the sound insula­ tion and the thick glass bulkhead make it quieter than you'd expect. It was even possible in this late production exam­ ple to enjoy Bob's tape player at 75 mph. If the driver sim­ ply wants to indulge in the beautiful noises—which include a good amount of transaxle whine— he simply puts down the windows and lets it all come in through the side vents.

Returning the Miura to Bob was like returning from Dis­neyland—we were sad to have to come back to the real world.

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The clutch is stiff and has a fairly long throw; it is now a conventional single-dry-plate unit rather than the 3-plate one of the prototype. It is up to its job and never once slipped in our acceleration tests, though we manhandled it to get wheelspin off the line. The gearbox, though its ratios are satisfactory and its synchronizers unbeatable, is a major point of irritation: shifting action is stiff, often obstructive. The lever is gated and on the test car the gate so interfered with the lever that it was wearing a groove in the latter. As a consequence, our acceleration times are less impressive than they would have been with really quick shifting; the 2-3 upshift was particularly slow. The 5-4 downshift was also slow and so clumsy as to require considerable diversion of attention. (A flick-away plate blocks out reverse for road work.) The shift linkage is of necessity complex as it has to go around the engine to get back to the transmission; Lamborghini will no doubt improve on its action with more de­velopment time.

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Stiff shifting or no, the Miura is an absolute blast to drive on a winding road— if you've got the nerve. It's the nearest thing to a Sports Prototype you could ask for: the springing is soft and the damping as mild as is wise for a car with all this performance. Thus an undulating surface produces a mild bobbing action, which has no effect at all on adhesion. Suspension geometry gives rather strong understeer at speeds up to about 50 mph, and above that one begins to sense the transition to neutral steering. One quickly finds himself nego­ tiating corners at 10-20 mph above what he has been doing in the typically good-handling sports or GT cars and look­ing forward to the next curve so he can go a little faster through it. Even though the Miura has high-speed radial tires rather than racing rubber, and equal sizes front and rear at that, it has the same wonderful property of combining lots of adhesion with a great feeling of communication with the front wheels that allows the driver to "twitch" the car through a turn at what seems like fantastic speed. There's some steering kickback on sharp bumps but this is the price paid for the intimate relation between steering wheel and front wheels— and it's worth it.

On the straight— and mind you, we're talking about just a few places where you can do such things in the States— the Miura is satisfactorily stable up to about 130 mph, though it's more sensitive to sidewinds than a fast front- engine car. Above that one begins to sense lightness, and at top speed it's, well, light. But the car feels as if it should be driven at least 100 mph out on the road; anything less is a bore.

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As for ultimate performance, the Miura we tested was not fully up to our expectations. At the high-speed test site (where the elevation is over 3000 ft, admittedly), the Miura was able to attain a 2-way average of 162.9 mph at just over 7000 rpm — not exactly slow, but we had expected something nearer 180. Then, at the recommendation of Estes' technical expert Jack Robbins, we removed the air cleaners, re-ran and got 167.2. Back at Orange County Int'l Raceway, the Vi-mile times weren't as spectacular as we hoped for either, but we reminded ourselves that (a) the car is not really geared for the "quarter" and (b) it is consider­ ably heavier, at 2850 lb, than information on the original prototype indicated. In any case, we dare anybody to come up with a car that can cover any given stretch of road faster than the Miura can with the same degree of comfort.

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The Miura's brakes are huge and are designed primarily for the high-speed work you'd like to be doing in it. For ordinary "American" use they present problems. They like to be hot: cool—as when cruising at 70 mph—they cause slewing when applied hard, squeal a lot and can produce a maximum deceleration of only 23 ft/sec/sec. When warmed up by a little hard use, however, they can stop the car from you-name-the-speed at 29 ft/sec/sec in a straight line; they faded not at all in our standard fade test. Consisting of 12-in. discs at the front and 11-in. discs at the rear, they have very wide calipers for a swept area of no less than 700 sq in!

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The ride of the Miura can be classified as comfortable, at least from the standpoint of springing. It takes rough roads in stride, though one has to be careful about dips because the front end is low and vulnerable. Admittedly we didn't put it through all paces in this department: the reader should understand that there are certain tests to which we don't subject $20,000 cars! Noise level is another thing: road noise and wind roar are undetectable beneath the powertrain noise, and long-distance driving can be tiring because of the din if not from the ride. Believe it or not, the noise level takes a sharp downturn at 80 mph.

Driving position is surprisingly conventional for a car that's only 41.5 in. high and is not nearly as "prone" as one expects. The seats are relatively high, giving good vision forward but restricting headroom for anyone larger than about 5 ft 8 in. tall. Seats are true buckets, giving lots of lateral support but, again, restricting the comfort level for larger bodies. On the other hand, the steering wheel is so far away that a shorter person has trouble reaching it; Estes said he was going to have the wheel moved rearward on his car.

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There's no heat problem from the engine but the large and steeply raked windshield does tend to make the cockpit hot. The windshield's top 8 in. or so has no effect on useful vision, so we'd suggest it be tinted heavily. Vision to the rear is better than we expected: at first it seems impossible to see anything beyond that engine, but as confidence is gained it becomes natural to look through the engine com­ partm ent. Still, the outside rearview mirrors are necessary and we were irritated that the right one was not only obscured by the right windshield wiper but difficult to adjust.

We never sensed any lack of shoulder room or legroom;the pedals are a bit close, in typical Italian packaging, and too upright. On the passenger side there's an adjustable, removable footrest. The window cranks—somehow we ex­ pected electric lifts—are slow and too close to door pad­ ding and armrest, with the result that one bangs knuckles when rolling them up and down.

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Instrumentation is, simply, what we expect in this sort of car. In front of the driver are a large 200-mph speedometer and a 10,000-rpm tachometer. All the other gauges are grouped in the center cowled console and do require quite a diversion of attention. We think that, somehow, all the critical instruments should be directly in front of the driver — especially on a really fast car. Warning lights and switches (the latter over the windshield) were also disappointing on the Miura: the former just barely visible, and neither labelled.

Ventilation and heating are simple, almost primitive. A good supply of fresh air comes into a plenum which can be heated, via a rudimentary water valve under the dash, for distribution to the feet or windshield; raw air comes through two outlets in the rear bulkhead between the seats, and an extractor vent is in the roof. The blower has only one speed.

Service accessibility is especially good except for the en­gine itself. Both ends of the car hinge smoothly and well out of the way; even if the car doesn't require a lot of attention it will attract a lot of attention with its lids all raised, for its innards are a most impressive sight. Lubrication and oil changes are called for every 2500 miles and the warranty, in Bob Estes' word, is "flexible"— meaning that each car will be dealt with individually according to its use.

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Returning the Miura to Bob was like returning from Dis­neyland—we were sad to have to come back to the real world. No, it's not perfect, and no. it's not practical. But driving it is one of those beautiful experiences. It's not a car you'd want as your only car— that would be like listening to Beethoven's 9th Symphony incessantly— but then, who that can afford it would have only one car? We can't imagine any good use for it in the crowded eastern half of the U.S. ei­ther; but if we lived in the West and had $20,000 to spend on a car, we'd not be without a Miura. Vrooooooom!

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